Small Business NAS

[Bigtex74]

Hello all on the Linus Team,

 

I have been watching Linus for a couple of years now and love how y’all break the steps down for easier understanding.
With that said I’m looking to build a NAS system, specifically a free NAS since that keeps popping up as the best NAS option for DIY. Before jumping in over my head I wanted to ask the Linus Team for some advice before buying anything

 

Here is what I'm using the NAS for:

1. small business:
   1. Graphic design company where we move large files around the office, several GB in size per file, and do so throughout the day.
      1. We store the design files on the NAS and as needed open the design files on certain PC systems, with design software. Make the needed edits then transfer to different folders depending on the products to be produced, such as full vehicle wraps.
      2. When we do the bigger files everyone in the office feels it and voices the drop in network connect speeds.
      3. Right now we are using a LG network Storage LG N2B1DD2 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822319005)
         1. It has worked good besides occasional lagging out and lately running out of space really quick.
      4. We also have a  NETGEAR ProSAFE JGS516 ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122057) Gigabit Switch.

What I Wanting / trying to achieve:

1. faster transfer speeds of files
2. more storage (usable 6TB in a RAID z2 or z3)
   1. do you have a better suggestion?

Items I have found and think that will work.(with free NAS)

1. hard drives (WD Red and Seagate NAS HDD)
2. RAM I know it needs to be ECC and 1 ram per 1TB.
   1. Is there a brand that is better suited for NAS usage?
3. Motherboard: I am looking at either the ASRock Rack Mini ITX DDR3 1333 Motherboards C2550D4I or ASRock Rack E3C224D4I-14S
   1. Do you have a preference or a better option?
4. CPU I have no idea
   1. Do you have a preference?
5. Power supply (anything GOLD)
   1. Do you have a preference?
6. I do have an old PCs around the shop
   1. here is the PC spec http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=W6409-R
      1. Is it better to reuse parts or get new?

Budget:

1. $700 - $1000. Is the ideally range but less without jeopardizing performance is always better

 

Any input / advice or parts you would recommend would help me out a lot.

 

I am concerned I may be jumping off into waters unknown and would be willing to hire someone to build and set-up the system.

 

Thanks again for your time

Thad

 

 

[Captain_WD]

9 hours ago, Bigtex74 said:

~snip~

Hey there Bigtex74 Thanks for the extensive explanation. 

 

Have you considered an all-in-one professional NAS for this purpose? I could suggest checking out WD My Cloud DL4100 as it's the most powerful NAS in the WD's consumer and prosumer NAS lineup. It features a good CPU with 2GB RAM (which is expandable to 6GB if needed), supports JBOD, RAID0, RAID1, RAID5 and RAID10 for redundancy, speed and a mixture between them and offers a ton of features. The NAS has a dual Power and a dual Gigabit Ethernet ports for power and connection redundancy. The NAS comes with WD Red drives and can be purchases empty as well as with four 6TB drives. It should work perfectly fine as a file-sharing network storage for your purposes.

 

You can also check the smaller version WD My Cloud DL2100 as well as the other My Cloud solutions and see if any of them work for you.

 

If you prefer to have a self-built NAS it may be a good idea to first start with the OS choice and based on that decide on the different parts. Some OSs have requirements that others don't necessarily need to operate (amount of RAM, specific type of CPU, RAID controllers, etc.).

 

Post back if you have further questions or if I can help wit anything else! I'm sure the guys with experience will also give you their two cents here.

 

Captain_WD. 

[Bigtex74]

On 5/13/2016 at 8:56 AM, Captain_WD said:

Hey there Bigtex74 Thanks for the extensive explanation. 

 

Have you considered an all-in-one professional NAS for this purpose? I could suggest checking out WD My Cloud DL4100 as it's the most powerful NAS in the WD's consumer and prosumer NAS lineup. It features a good CPU with 2GB RAM (which is expandable to 6GB if needed), supports JBOD, RAID0, RAID1, RAID5 and RAID10 for redundancy, speed and a mixture between them and offers a ton of features. The NAS has a dual Power and a dual Gigabit Ethernet ports for power and connection redundancy. The NAS comes with WD Red drives and can be purchases empty as well as with four 6TB drives. It should work perfectly fine as a file-sharing network storage for your purposes.

 

You can also check the smaller version WD My Cloud DL2100 as well as the other My Cloud solutions and see if any of them work for you.

 

If you prefer to have a self-built NAS it may be a good idea to first start with the OS choice and based on that decide on the different parts. Some OSs have requirements that others don't necessarily need to operate (amount of RAM, specific type of CPU, RAID controllers, etc.).

 

Post back if you have further questions or if I can help wit anything else! I'm sure the guys with experience will also give you their two cents here.

 

Captain_WD. 

i will check out the WD but i was hoping to get some more input then more forward on the project.

 

i will give a little more time before we do a already built NAS

 

 

[Bigtex74]

any one have input on these?

QNAP TVS-863+

QNAP TS-831X

Synology DS2015xs

 

i am leaning to the QNAP but would love input on building my own or buying one of these.

thanks BIgtex

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, Bigtex74 said:

any one have input on these?

QNAP TVS-863+

QNAP TS-831X

Synology DS2015xs

 

i am leaning to the QNAP but would love input on building my own or buying one of these.

thanks BIgtex

Personally I like QNAP the most out of the NAS brands, QNAP TVS-863+ seems like the better pick mostly due to the pre installed 10GBase-T NIC. I would prefer a stronger CPU model if you are editing directly off the NAS but they are rather expensive.

 

For the self build you don't need 1GB of ram per 1TB of storage, this is a frequently miss quoted requirement. The 1GB-5GB per 1TB of storage is only a recommendation and only when using the deduplication feature of ZFS. Even with this recommendation it is for rather high usage demand networks, likely more than you have. Stick with either 8GB as a minimum or 16GB and if going with 16GB don't increase beyond that unless you need to, if performance is an issue.

 

Also 10Gb network connectivity is nice but not cheap either, add an extra 0 to the Netgear switch you posted sort of pricing for even the most basic switches. Mentioning this since all 3 models you listed are 10G or 10G capable with upgrade. You can get cheaper stuff second hand on ebay which is actually better than new low end 10Gb network switches.

[dave01978]

For professional use i would purchase one, as you want stability.  You probably should either have a backup or another one for redundancy. As well

[Guest]

Either a HP ML10v2 running Server Essentials or otherwise a QNAP 4bay. One with a 10gig expansion slot may be a better bet for future use. 

[Captain_WD]

On 20.05.2016 г. at 9:56 PM, Bigtex74 said:

~snip~

In that case I'll leave the guys to give you some more insights on the other products as I can't really commend on them. 
I would second @dave01978's suggestion for the redundancy/safety as Business storage solutions almost always require backup/redundancy as they store mission-critical data on them and you don't really want to put that in danger.
Feel free to ask if there's anything I can help with!

Captain_WD.

[Eniqmatic]

I think you've done quite a good bit of research on Freenas (judging by your descriptions and answers of some things) so I assume this is the OS that appeals to you?

 

You say you want faster transfer of files between NAS and machine, something that many people want. The only viable option in my mind at this moment in time is going 10 gig. Obviously you will need to invest in the infrastructure for this, and at a minimum you will need a new switch, new network cards for your NAS and all clients accessing the NAS at 10 gig, and also faster disks than what you have above, if you want to make full use of 10gig.

Obviously this isn't going to be cheap and probably outside the scope of the budget you have above. There are other options like fiber channel or ISCSI, but 10gig will become the mainstream future and probably more worth the investment. ISCSI could be a slightly better alternative if you wanted something like 2-4gbps, but I don't know what your infrastructure is like so this could become costly.

 

You could however quite easily increase the speed of multiple concurrent connections, at 1gbps. So you could allow multiple clients to access the NAS at 1gbps each, if you added another NIC to the NAS and teamed these, with a compatible switch.

 

Moving onto the hardware:

 

1. WD Red's are an excellent choice, IMO. HGST seem to have a good failure rate also. 

2. In my opinion, 1TB per GB is a good rule of thumb for a first time user of ZFS, up to a point. 16GB of RAM is generally a good place for most people, unless you have significantly more disks. You say 6TB usable total, I would say 16GB is a good place for you to start. Brands, no. Just find something with a lifetime warrenty, most good brands do. Kingston or Crucial will be cheapest.

3. The 2 ASRock boards you've specified are very popular for this application. If you go with the C2550D4I, it has an 8 core Avoton CPU on which is good, and will be more than enough for simple file server duties. It also has 4 full size RAM slots, an IPMI ports and loads of SATA ports which is good. It really is an excellent board, providing you get a good one. The other board is cheaper, but you will need to buy a CPU and has less RAM slots leaving for less upgradability. 

4. If you go with the other board listed, you could get a Pentium G3258 which supports ECC.

5. Pick a good quality brand you like, for a good price.

6. I wouldn't use anything from that machine.

 

Building your own NAS really is great and will result in much more flexibility, reliability and rock solid performance for a long time, providing you do it right first time. I really couldn't recommend it enough to you. If you do decide to go with Freenas, it will look after you for a long, long time.

 

I'd be happy to help out with any other specific questions.

[Bigtex74]

10 hours ago, Eniqmatic said:

I think you've done quite a good bit of research on Freenas (judging by your descriptions and answers of some things) so I assume this is the OS that appeals to you?

 

You say you want faster transfer of files between NAS and machine, something that many people want. The only viable option in my mind at this moment in time is going 10 gig. Obviously you will need to invest in the infrastructure for this, and at a minimum you will need a new switch, new network cards for your NAS and all clients accessing the NAS at 10 gig, and also faster disks than what you have above, if you want to make full use of 10gig.

Obviously this isn't going to be cheap and probably outside the scope of the budget you have above. There are other options like fiber channel or ISCSI, but 10gig will become the mainstream future and probably more worth the investment. ISCSI could be a slightly better alternative if you wanted something like 2-4gbps, but I don't know what your infrastructure is like so this could become costly.

 

You could however quite easily increase the speed of multiple concurrent connections, at 1gbps. So you could allow multiple clients to access the NAS at 1gbps each, if you added another NIC to the NAS and teamed these, with a compatible switch.

 

Moving onto the hardware:

 

1. WD Red's are an excellent choice, IMO. HGST seem to have a good failure rate also. 

2. In my opinion, 1TB per GB is a good rule of thumb for a first time user of ZFS, up to a point. 16GB of RAM is generally a good place for most people, unless you have significantly more disks. You say 6TB usable total, I would say 16GB is a good place for you to start. Brands, no. Just find something with a lifetime warrenty, most good brands do. Kingston or Crucial will be cheapest.

3. The 2 ASRock boards you've specified are very popular for this application. If you go with the C2550D4I, it has an 8 core Avoton CPU on which is good, and will be more than enough for simple file server duties. It also has 4 full size RAM slots, an IPMI ports and loads of SATA ports which is good. It really is an excellent board, providing you get a good one. The other board is cheaper, but you will need to buy a CPU and has less RAM slots leaving for less upgradability. 

4. If you go with the other board listed, you could get a Pentium G3258 which supports ECC.

5. Pick a good quality brand you like, for a good price.

6. I wouldn't use anything from that machine.

 

Building your own NAS really is great and will result in much more flexibility, reliability and rock solid performance for a long time, providing you do it right first time. I really couldn't recommend it enough to you. If you do decide to go with Freenas, it will look after you for a long, long time.

 

I'd be happy to help out with any other specific questions.

Thank you so much for the details and information everyone.

 

you are correct we are not ready for a FULL 10 gig set-up but we are wanting to expand into having that in time as we upgrade since it will be standard before we know it.

 

right now we are thinking about getting the TVS-663 and adding the 10 gig when ready to upgrade. going with this option for a more stable NAS we can start using right now and it also has TONS for features. i know freeNAS has some to but was shocked with all the things QNAP has and lifetime support is very nice to.

 

i will be building a freeNAS but i want to take my time and do it right so it will last the times and i dont  wont be in a tight spot if i mess something up for it.

 

on the C2550D4I if i get that one would the CPU be able to handle PLEX with 4 to 5 users at the same time using it with some on lan and some off site remotely streaming? (this is the most users that might be using it at one time)

 

if you have any more input on parts for building a good long term freeNAS keep them coming.

 

the parts im thinking right now are:

board: C2550D4I

CPU: g530 (only if i need it) or if you have a better option for long term

Ram: 16GB KIT (2 x 8GB) DIMM DDR3 ECC Registered PC3-10600 1333MHz Dual Rank RAM Memory (want i found on amazon) any better options?

power: 210-GQ-0650-V1

Hard drive: has anyone tried this one before? (Hitachi 2TB 64MB Cache 7200RPM link)

anyways here is the price break down for hard drives right now:

	1tb	2tb	3tb	4tb	5tb	6tb	8tb
wd red	$    60.99	$    45.00	$    36.33	$    37.50	$    39.00	$    39.83	$    41.98
seagate	$    64.99	$    40.00	$    33.27	$    32.25		$    37.67	$    46.88
HGST			$    44.93	$    40.86	$    45.00	$    42.48
Hitachi		$    31.00

with the pricing right i am going to get Wd red 3 qty (3tb) and seagate 3 qty (4tb)

these will be used on the freenass build and TVS-663 2

also i do have a question on the wd red says you can only have up to 8 drives working together on one system. is this true?

 

anyways thanks again for all the help and info

Thad

 

 

[Eniqmatic]

4 hours ago, Bigtex74 said:

Thank you so much for the details and information everyone.

 

you are correct we are not ready for a FULL 10 gig set-up but we are wanting to expand into having that in time as we upgrade since it will be standard before we know it.

 

right now we are thinking about getting the TVS-663 and adding the 10 gig when ready to upgrade. going with this option for a more stable NAS we can start using right now and it also has TONS for features. i know freeNAS has some to but was shocked with all the things QNAP has and lifetime support is very nice to.

 

i will be building a freeNAS but i want to take my time and do it right so it will last the times and i dont  wont be in a tight spot if i mess something up for it.

 

on the C2550D4I if i get that one would the CPU be able to handle PLEX with 4 to 5 users at the same time using it with some on lan and some off site remotely streaming? (this is the most users that might be using it at one time)

 

if you have any more input on parts for building a good long term freeNAS keep them coming.

 

the parts im thinking right now are:

board: C2550D4I

CPU: g530 (only if i need it) or if you have a better option for long term

Ram: 16GB KIT (2 x 8GB) DIMM DDR3 ECC Registered PC3-10600 1333MHz Dual Rank RAM Memory (want i found on amazon) any better options?

power: 210-GQ-0650-V1

Hard drive: has anyone tried this one before? (Hitachi 2TB 64MB Cache 7200RPM link)

anyways here is the price break down for hard drives right now:

	1tb	2tb	3tb	4tb	5tb	6tb	8tb
wd red	$    60.99	$    45.00	$    36.33	$    37.50	$    39.00	$    39.83	$    41.98
seagate	$    64.99	$    40.00	$    33.27	$    32.25		$    37.67	$    46.88
HGST			$    44.93	$    40.86	$    45.00	$    42.48
Hitachi		$    31.00

with the pricing right i am going to get Wd red 3 qty (3tb) and seagate 3 qty (4tb)

these will be used on the freenass build and TVS-663 2

also i do have a question on the wd red says you can only have up to 8 drives working together on one system. is this true?

 

anyways thanks again for all the help and info

Thad

 

 

What features does the QNAP have that you would use and want? I'd be surprised if it does anything better/more that FreeNAS does not do. Having said that the lifetime warranty is as you say, good.

 

It would handle plex, without any transcoding I would imagine, if you need to transcode then no, you will need a much beefier processor for that kind of task.

 

You also have the new ASRock versions of these boards which take Skylake processors on the C236 chipset. You can get the E3-1200 v5 Xeon's for these.

 

I wouldn't personally use that drive as its a desktop harddrive, not rated for 24/7 operation from what I can tell. 

 

I've had good success with WD Red's personally, I currently run 9 seperate FreeNAS installations at 9 different offices, plus a personal one, all have WD Red's in them now, but used to have some Seagates. I've had 1 WD Red fail I think total and they were really good about replacing them, simply sent them the drive and they had no qualms or issues, just sent another one straight back. I had about 3-4 Seagate drives fail (they were older and used units granted). Whatever you go for, get drives rated for 24/7 use. 

 

Also, I would personally avoid 3TB drives, I've seen a couple of charts on hard drive failure statistics from independent and 3tb seem much more failure prone than the rest of the sizes, regardless of manufacturer. That may have changed now though. Sorry don't have the source, have a google search.

 

I don't understand your question about the WD Red's, could you explain? You can have has as many drives as you want together in one system, the only thing limiting you is your hardware and budget. I don't see how this would be limited to WD Red's only if this were true. 

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, Bigtex74 said:

also i do have a question on the wd red says you can only have up to 8 drives working together on one system. is this true?

 

4 hours ago, Eniqmatic said:

I don't understand your question about the WD Red's, could you explain? You can have has as many drives as you want together in one system, the only thing limiting you is your hardware and budget. I don't see how this would be limited to WD Red's only if this were true. 

WD rate Red's for systems with 8 disks or less, Red Pro's for systems up to 16 disks and Se for 24 disks. These are per unit/chassis not how many can actually be in an array, expansion bays for example. It's all about the vibration of the disks in the chassis and how the disks are designed to handle it.

 

There is no hard limit the only difference is the Red Pro's and Se (dual processors) have more optimized firmware for larger arrays with better vibration/shock protection.

 

If you look at a prebuilt NAS system that uses WD OEM disks and has 8 or less bays they will come with Red's and more than 8 bays they will come with Red Pro's. Personally at home I'd stick with Red's regardless but for business I would stay within design spec for warranty/support reasons.

[Bigtex74]

8 hours ago, Eniqmatic said:

I don't understand your question about the WD Red's, could you explain? You can have has as many drives as you want together in one system, the only thing limiting you is your hardware and budget. I don't see how this would be limited to WD Red's only if this were true. 

sorry if i didn't explain this very well but "leadeater" is correct on what i was asking and thank you for the answer!

 

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

WD rate Red's for systems with 8 disks or less, Red Pro's for systems up to 16 disks and Se for 24 disks. These are per unit/chassis not how many can actually be in an array, expansion bays for example. It's all about the vibration of the disks in the chassis and how the disks are designed to handle it.

 

[Bigtex74]

9 hours ago, Eniqmatic said:

What features does the QNAP have that you would use and want? I'd be surprised if it does anything better/more that FreeNAS does not do. Having said that the lifetime warranty is as you say, good.

QNAP has a signage Station for free and you can use it anywhere as long at the tv is "SMART"

http://www.qnap.com/static/useng/signage_station/index.php

 

this is very expenses from other providers

 

do you know if freeNAS has an option like this?

[Bigtex74]

9 hours ago, Eniqmatic said:

You also have the new ASRock versions of these boards which take Skylake processors on the C236 chipset. You can get the E3-1200 v5 Xeon's for these.

would you recommend the C236 WSI or C236M WS?

 

is the CPU that you are talking about? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016TQ828U/ref=psdc_229189_t1_B01740QUL6

 

[Eniqmatic]

On 5/25/2016 at 6:23 PM, Bigtex74 said:

would you recommend the C236 WSI or C236M WS?

 

is the CPU that you are talking about? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016TQ828U/ref=psdc_229189_t1_B01740QUL6

 

Neither of those probably, the WS board is Micro ATX incase you hadn't noticed.

 

I'd probably get this:

http://asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C232D2I#Specifications